Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
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Mr. McCAIN. May I say it is my understanding that Dr. Barrasso has actually seen Medicare Advantage patients. He and Dr. Coburn are probably the only two. Maybe we could let him give us the benefit of his experience and also not only the benefit of his experience, but I am sure he is going to tell us what the impact is going to be on the low-income seniors from his State.
Mr. BARRASSO. I agree with the Senator from Arizona that people choose to be on Medicare Advantage. Mr. President, 11 million people have chosen to be on Medicare Advantage because it is a wise choice to make because they get better benefits. They get dental care, they get the vision care, they get the hearing aids, they get the fitness thing.
Mr. McCAIN. Just as we do.
Mr. BARRASSO. Just as we do. It works in preventive care and coordinated care.
Mr. McCAIN. I don't think they have as nice a gym, though, as we are going to get.
Mr. BARRASSO. It is also no surprise when people read about this and learn about it that they would want to be on Medicare Advantage. What the Senator from Utah has said, the sponsor of this motion, is that the money that goes into this program is for the benefit of the seniors. It is for services for the seniors on Medicare. To me, this whole bill basically guts Medicare, raids Medicare to start a whole new program.
Today, as the Senator from Arizona has mentioned in these articles, the Associated Press and USA Today said:
Senate Democrats closed ranks Thursday behind $460 billion in politically risky Medicare cuts at the heart of health care legislation. .....
It goes on to say:
Approval would have stripped out money to pay for expanding coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.
So they are going to take $460 billion, it says, away from our seniors who depend on it for their Medicare and start a whole new government program. The Washington Times, front-page story headline, reads: ``Democrats Win $400B in Medicare Cuts. McCain Pushed for Another Way to Pay for It.''
I look at this and say this is not fair to our seniors, not fair to the patients I have taken care of for 25 years in Wyoming, taken care of folks--taken care of folks--when grandmom breaks her hip, what we need to do for our patients. These are choices people have made.
Mr. President, 11 million Americans have chosen Medicare Advantage because there is an advantage to them for the health care they get--the additional services, the coordinated care, the preventive care. Anyone who looks at this and studies it says: I want to sign up.
It has been wonderful in rural areas and big cities. This has helped a lot of people in the country. It is not surprising that one out of four people in the country on Medicare have chosen Medicare Advantage, but yet what we are seeing here is Democrats want to get rid of Medicare Advantage.
Mr. McCAIN. Let me get this straight. Basically, by removing the choices that seniors have as a part of Medicare Advantage--dental, vision, hearing, fitness--we are taking away from them what we ourselves enjoy every single day in the Senate?
Mr. BARRASSO. We are taking it away from seniors and using all that money to start a new government program when we know Medicare is going to go broke by 2017.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Wyoming, with whom I have the privilege of serving, I saw a large story in USA Today. This story says ``Senate Keeps Medicare Cuts in the Bill.''
What it says is:
Senate Democrats closed ranks Thursday behind $460 billion in politically risky Medicare cuts at the heart of health care legislation.
It goes on to say:
Approval would have stripped out money to pay for expanded coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.
As I read this, it says the Republicans tried to keep the Medicare money for people on Medicare, but the Democrats want to take $460 billion away from seniors who depended upon Medicare and use it to start a whole new government program. Am I reading this correctly?
Mr. ENZI. That is the way I read it. That is the way the people in Wyoming are reading it and that is apparently the way people all over the country are reading it, particularly seniors. Seniors are the ones upset about what is happening and it is easy to see why. Even though the AARP says this is a good bill, they are saying: Wait a minute. I know people in the nursing home. I know people--some of them are saying I am in the nursing home. I am hearing what is going to happen at my nursing home if these cuts go into place.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would say when my colleague from Wyoming and I held townhall meetings around the State of Wyoming, people have said don't cut our Medicare. Yet what I see this bill doing is cutting our Medicare and specifically, right now, there are thousands of people in Wyoming who are on a program called Medicare Advantage. There is an advantage to this program. That is why so many Americans have signed up for the program.
As a matter of fact, about one in four Americans who depend upon Medicare for their health care in this country has chosen Medicare Advantage, because there are some advantages being in this program called Medicare Advantage: dental, vision, hearing, fitness. Also, as a practicing doctor for 25 years, taking care of families in Wyoming, what I saw, the reason they liked this, if they were on Medicare, is because it dealt with prevention and it actually helped coordinate care.
One of the things Medicare does not do as well is coordinate care and work with prevention. We know how important prevention is in helping people keep down the cost of their care--how good it is in terms of giving people opportunities to stay healthy. That is why they call it prevention.
The bill in front of us, as I see it--I ask the Senator from Wyoming--is a bill that is going to cut $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, the program the people in our State like?
Mr. ENZI. The Senator from Wyoming is absolutely correct. We are getting a lot of calls and mail, letters about that. Another thing the President promised, of course, is that everybody would have catastrophic coverage. It fascinates me that the Wyoming people and the people across America have figured out that Medicare doesn't have catastrophic coverage. But Medicare Advantage provides catastrophic coverage as well as a number of other things that Medicare does not cover. I think they realize, too, that if Medicare Advantage goes away, yes, they can get Medigap but Medigap is more expensive. It is also interesting that the AARP sells Medigap.
Mr. BARRASSO. I actually heard somebody say Medicare Advantage is not Medicare. But if you turn to the Centers for Medicare Services' 2010 Official Government Handbook--we are going to go into 2010 next month. If you go to the official handbook for 2010, and the handbook is called ``Medicare And You,'' it says a Medicare Advantage plan is ``another health coverage choice you may have as part of Medicare.'' People who actually look at this choose this. They make the choice because they say this is a good deal for me. That is what Americans want. They want to get value for their money.
A recent poll said, in terms of Americans, when they send money to Congress, how much of that do they get back in value? They think about 50 cents on the dollar. That is a national Gallop Poll. They have been polling on this for a long time and it is the highest number ever of what Americans think, in terms of the fact that they are getting very little value for their tax dollars. They see games being played. That is what I hear when I have telephone townhall meetings in Wyoming. They know Senator Reid's bill steals $464 billion from Medicare. They know it raids the health care program they depend upon, not to make Medicare stronger, not to make Medicare more solvent, but as my colleague from Wyoming tells me, to create a brandnew entitlement program. They are raiding Medicare to start another government program that is itself going to be insolvent.
I ask my colleague from Wyoming, are you seeing what I am seeing?
Mr. ENZI. I am seeing what you are seeing. I am noticing some people do not know what an entitlement actually is. That is a bill that goes on forever, that the Secretary of Health and Human Services has to make sure that it is paid in perpetuity unless there is some other major Congressional action that happens. We keep paying that bill over and over again. I think the Senator from Wyoming recognizes entitlements and some of the difficulties involved with that.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, an article in Bloomberg yesterday said the Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this past month found that 60 percent of seniors said they would be better off if Congress did not change the health care system.
We know we need to do some changes. But this massive bill, this 2,000-page bill that weighs 20 pounds, is not the right change we need. For our seniors, people who rely on Medicare for their health care, to absolutely raid $464 billion from Medicare, almost $ 1/2 trillion, there is a point where more people--the baby boomers, more and more people are added to the rolls every day. To raid this program to start a whole new government program is not the right prescription for America. It is not what our seniors want. It is not what they signed up for. It is not why they are choosing Medicare Advantage. It is because it is a choice they make and that is why we right now have 11 million Americans who are on Medicare Advantage. We have 11 million seniors--that represents almost one-quarter of all Medicare patients in this country.
Mr. ENZI. We are being notified our time is up. We will continue. I have several letters from Wyoming organizations that I want to have printed in the Record, and I will do that at a later time.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, does the Senator from Wyoming want the remainder of our 20 minutes?
Mr. BARRASSO. Yes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, to correct something I heard on the floor today, when the senior Senator from Connecticut had some concerns about this, he said how private health plans deny claims. He said Medicare doesn't deny claims.
In the United States of America, the No. 1 denier of claims for health care is Medicare. The study that is out from a full year, from March 2007 to March 2008, Medicare rejected 475,000 claims of its 6.9 million claims filed, at the rate of 6.85 percent. When you compare that to private insurance companies, the industry average for the claims that are rejected is about 4.05 percent.
So Medicare rejects, by number, 10 times more than the largest private insurance company. A lot of these claims--I have followed this closely because I have been the medical director of something called the Wyoming Health Fairs, where people can get their blood tested at a low cost. It is a preventive or prevention-designed program. Yet Medicare refuses to pay for prevention. It refuses to pay for these blood tests because they are preventive as opposed to diagnosing a specific problem in a specific patient with a specific symptom.
What do our seniors in America do? They turn to a program called Medicare Advantage because it gives them the advantage to choose this program. It is one of the choices they have under Medicare. At this point, 11 million Americans have chosen to participate in Medicare Advantage and receive their health care through Medicare Advantage. We are talking about seniors who depend on Medicare for their health care.
The number of people signing up for Medicare Advantage has continued to increase, and now there are 11 million people--or one out of every four seniors--on Medicare in this country. They know who they are and they like the program. The reason they like the program is because they get additional services--services beyond what someone on the traditional Medicare Program receives, such as dental care, hearing care, eye care, preventive care, and coordinated care.
We hear a lot about the failings of the health care system, and there are many in this country, and one of them is that care is not coordinated. People go from specialist to specialist. We need coordinated care. Medicare Advantage does a much better job at coordinating care than traditional Medicare.
It is baffling to me that the plan in front of us in the Senate today is trying to eliminate Medicare Advantage to the tune of over $100 billion. When one looks at the cuts that are in this plan--it is $464 billion in Medicare cuts, $135 billion for hospitals, $42 billion for home health agencies, $15 billion for nursing homes, and $8 billion for hospice providers. But it is $120 billion for Medicare Advantage--the program that more seniors, as they learn about it, want to sign up for, because it is an advantage to them to have their health care through a program which focuses on preventive care, coordinated care, and helps them stay healthy and live longer. Yet this Senate and this bill that Senator Reid has brought to the floor is trying to completely gut that program and deny our seniors who rely upon it from receiving the care they have earned.
I yield the floor.
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